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Archive for February, 2010

I thought I would run a pre-made adventure this past week. After all, I was busy dying of a nasty sinus infection, and it seemed to make sense.

Never. Again.

Things are too restrictive, and while I’m tweaking it a bit, I don’t have as much flexibility as I usually do to deal with my player’s questions. After we finish this particular adventure, I’ll post a link to it. I think it’s a good starting point, but I doubt I’ll ever use something like this again. Even if I just wing it, I think the alternative is better than running somebody else’s story.

Sorry for the week of silence– I got felled by a really nasty sickness. I seem to be doing better now, but it’s been rough. Anyway, look! A new feature! At this time, I am unsure of how regular a feature this will be, since so many of my NPCs are tied up in existing plot threads that I don’t want to reveal yet. I am trying very hard to prevent spoiling future plot points in this blog. Really. However, I do like having the opportunity for me to round out my poor, underappreciated NPCs. No stats will be posted, to allow for greater flexibility and decreasing the odds of me accidentally letting something slip, in case any of my players stumble across this site (other than my husband, I really have no idea if any of them read this blog, so I figure I’ll err on the side of caution).

Our first character is going to be Jilad, as featured in the adventure Murder Most Fowl.

Appearance: When one first lays eyes on Jilad, two things are noticed: one, he extremely tall, even for a dragonborn; two, he is missing one arm. Which arm is missing is flexible, and up to DMs discretion. His scales are a light reddish-orange.

Possible use: Anywhere a DM might need someone distinctive who is also an outsider; a member of a mercenary group; or a ranger living alone in the woods.

Cursory Background: For most of his life, Jilad had been a soldier. It was not a career based out of any deep love for his land or people; rather he didn’t know how to do anything else. After he lost his arm, he was discharged from the army. At a loss, he wandered about the world, full of doubt. Over time, he began to develop new skills, rising to the challenges this new world gave him. During his journeys, he found a home with a group of people who made him feel needed and secure. These people are his emotional anchor– without them, he would once again be adrift.

Personality: While no longer a soldier, Jilad still maintains a strong sense of discipline. Because of that trait, he may come across as gruff and taciturn. He is slow to trust others, but once his loyalty has been earned, it is unwavering. If he feels those he cares about have been hurt, he will track down those responsible with cool, quiet fury. In that sense, he is like a scaly, pony-tailless Steven Segall. This makes him either a formidable foe or ally.

I’ve been working too much recently, and as happens so often when I push myself too much, my writing and other hobbies tends to drop off. It makes sense, really. It’s infinitely easier to log onto WoW and play for a couple of hours than sit down and try to produce something new and interesting. Most of the time, that’s fine, but recently the D&D campaign has suffered because of that. I haven’t really been planning where we are going too far out in advance, and that’s bad. BAD. The past two sessions have been info dump sessions, one where we recapped everything we knew, and another where I got the party from point A (destroyed remains of the village) to point B (Baldur’s Gate). Eh, I dunno, I think I need to work more on the campaign during the week. I know I should do it in 15 minutes chunks or break down everything into little pieces, or something, but I have a hard time working like that. I tend to throw myself into whatever I’m working on, so it’s difficult for me to break it down. But maybe I just need to practice. So, starting this week, I’m going to try breaking it down and seeing where I go from there. I’ll probably post about my process as it goes. You know, keep me honest about the whole thing. At least that’s how I hope it will work, and I won’t end up writing posts about “ARRRRRRRRGH, I AM MADE OF FAIL.” Excelsior!

You know, I post pretty erratically here, and part of that is that I feel I need to keep a ‘normal’ schedule. Part of that is that I do most of my D&D prep on Thursday, with running a game on Friday. So, henceforth, I shall have a Saturday to Wednesday schedule!

I quite like Valentine’s Day. I always have, even when I was a young and bitter person who hated everything to do with relationships. Back then, it was a holiday I didn’t have to wake up early for and could eat as much chocolate as I wanted. Now, I just appreciate having a day a year where we tell the important people in our lives “I love you” (in addition to eating as much chocolate as I want and baking cookies for said people). Yeah, I’m kind of a sap like that.

At the end of the last SiT update, the last thing we saw was that Israfel was in the bakery with a babe-licious human. He just entered dramatically, and froze in his ridiculous pose. There was a moment of awkward silence as he stood in the door, and the man and woman just stared at him.

"Gentlemen..."

After an awkward moment, the woman smiled at Israfel and asked if she could help him with anything. Israfel continued posing for a moment, and then (very dramatically, of course) asked who she was.
“Alba. I’m a baker,” she said with a smile.

Get Thee To A BakeryAnd with that, the next forty-five minutes was nothing but bread puns. That’s not to say it was a total loss. Israfel got in some good character interaction with Alba, even if nothing plot-related happened. In retrospect, I should have given him some bonus EXP for doing such a good job playing his character. A lesson learned for me. I gleaned a few possible plot hooks for future use, so it was a good mini-session for my purposes, even if I was seriously considering docking XP if I heard one more bread-related pun. Because, you know, that’s how I roll.

Decoys and DistractionsI’m not even sure what really happened next. I was still in a pun-induced daze, so I didn’t realize that the simple “we’re going to get a room at the inn,” ended up being “we’re going to create a decoy room at the inn, and then we’re going to all stay in the decoy room, thus rendering the original room the decoy room.” I… probably should have paid attention to the other half of the room while the bread puns were happening. *sigh* So, on the left half of the room, I keep hearing comments like “eh, I don’t have any plans, just going to loaf around;” on the right, an argument about which room will be the decoy, and which will be the place everybody actually is staying at.

However, in the middle of all this chaos, stood one player, attempting to make things right. Saren did stride forth and try to find information about the tower they were looking for. He didn’t find out much, just that it had been deserted about five years ago. But he did manage to find a map! Progress! Not that anyone else was paying attention, but at least we have a map!

While all this is going on, Cedrick and Pentaros peel off from the insanity and decide to check out a local café. While sipping coffee, they see an attractive woman walk by, escorted by a one-armed dude. They continue to sip their coffee and make small talk.